They would ask me what actors I saw in the roles. I would tell them, and they’d say “Oh that’s interesting.” And that would be the end of it.
--Elmore Leonard, in 2000, on the extent of his input for Hollywood's adaptation of his novels

Friday, July 3, 2015

Victoria Shorr's "Backlands"

Victoria Shorr is a writer and political activist who lived in Brazil for ten years. Currently she lives in Los Angeles, where she cofounded the Archer School for Girls, and is now working to found a college-prep school for girls on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

Here the author shares some ideas for adapting her novel for the big screen:

The characters in Backlands were real people, Brazilian outlaws, brave and tough and smart, and having traveled in the region and talked to so many people like them, people who knew them, it's harder for me to make that leap into casting than it would be for someone who only knew their story. The dream would be to cast the movie the way they cast Tom Jones, which absolutely caught the book by the tail. But who could do that? Maybe a Brazilian, like Walter Salles or Fernando Mireilles. Maybe a great dreamer, like Jane Campion.

“Compared to a novel, a film is like an economy pizza where there are no olives, no ham, no anchovies, no mushrooms, and all you’ve got is the dough.”
--Louis de Bernières, author of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin